How do you calculate calories and other info for homemade (and complicated) dishes?

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zinra
zinra Posts: 31 Member
in Food and Nutrition
It's easy to scan a barcode but what if you're cooking at home and using a lot of ingredients for one dish and/or cooking everything from scratch, what is the easiest way to calculate the nutrition information for this?

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  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
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    the recipe builder
    put in the amount of servings the recipe has
    enter all your ingredients (preferably with USDA information and correct weight in grams for better accuracy)
    save it and log the amount of servings you ate
    Then any time you use the recipe in the future, go to the recipe, update any ingredient amounts that need to be updated, save, and log.
  • qubetha
    qubetha Posts: 83 Member
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    I put all the ingredients into the recipe builder to calculate the total batch cals and when I am done cooking, I will weigh the entire batch and my serving to work out how many serves per batch. Alternatively, I weigh the entire batch and divide by the number of serves I was supposed to get so that I can calculate how much an individual serve weighs. If I am storing the batch for the week I write the weight of a single serve on the container so that I know what to weigh out each time (or bag up each serve in advance if I know I am the only one eating it).
  • kk_inprogress
    kk_inprogress Posts: 3,077 Member
    edited October 2015
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    Recipe builder! It's AWESOME.
    Took me 8 months to find it; don't know how I lived without it!
  • ericnsara325
    ericnsara325 Posts: 4 Member
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    Where is this? Is it an app or something on MFP?
    If its an app, which one?
  • dhygirl
    dhygirl Posts: 137 Member
    edited October 2015
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    *
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
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    ericnsara325 wrote: »
    Where is this? Is it an app or something on MFP?
    If its an app, which one?
    @ericnsara325
    MFP has a recipe builder.

    In the app, when you go to the menu you should see an option for "My Recipes & Foods". On the android version of the app it is the 5th selection on the menu. Click on it. To add a new recipe, make sure "recipes" is underlined in blue and then click the "+" in the top right hand corner.

    On the website go here:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/box
  • robertw486
    robertw486 Posts: 2,390 Member
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    ericnsara325 wrote: »
    Where is this? Is it an app or something on MFP?
    If its an app, which one?

    Part of MVP. One of the tabs you can swipe to under food. When you go to add food, just go to the Recipes page, and from there use the Recipe Builder. It takes some getting used to it, but works well.
  • MarcyKirkton
    MarcyKirkton Posts: 507 Member
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    Really I guess. I find something similar.
  • Ready2Rock206
    Ready2Rock206 Posts: 9,488 Member
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    I love the recipe builder. The more you use it the easier it gets.
  • zinra
    zinra Posts: 31 Member
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    Ready2Rock206 wrote: »
    I love the recipe builder. The more you use it the easier it gets.

    I've been using it now and it's a bit time consuming in the beginning indeed but hopefully it will get easier with time.
  • enterdanger
    enterdanger Posts: 2,447 Member
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    I've got like 6 pages of stuff in my recipes. Recipe builder is available to all MFP users, not just MVP
  • cocates
    cocates Posts: 360 Member
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    The recipe builder is a great tool. Just take a few minutes to figure it out, it's pretty simple. I love just putting in the URL to the recipe; it matches up your ingredients (so you don't have to type them) and then you can go back and edit the name of the ingredient and the weight/amount). :love:

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